Hugh Grant listens to classical music to calm nerves before film shoot

Hugh Grant listens to classical music on the way to set to calm his nerves before filming.

The Notting Hill actor started listening to classical music to prepare to play politician Jeremy Thorpe, who was a big fan of the genre, in the 2018 miniseries A Very English Scandal.

He discovered that the classical music had a calming effect on him and he has used it to get him relaxed before filming ever since.

"I have to listen to a lot of Beethoven and do a lot of really stupid breathing and then I can get into the state of total easy calm in front of the camera, which is something I'd wanted for 40 years," he revealed during a recent interview on BBC Radio 2. "(So) on the way to work and at work I listen to a hell of a lot of classical music."

The British actor noted that he started doing the breathing exercises around 20 years ago upon the advice of a therapist after he had panic attacks on film sets, adding, "It's weird, you do it for 5-10 minutes and then suddenly you start to reach a state of (calm)."

Grant candidly explained that the most nerve-wracking part of making any film is when the camera is filming him but he has no lines to say.

"I quite like speaking, it relaxes me, and I dread the moments when they say, 'OK Hugh, it's just you reacting, there's no words, we're just gonna push in on your face for a minute here,'" he shared. "That's hard. I can do the first 10 seconds and traditionally my jaw starts to get tense and I start to think, 'What's happening here?' But I might have cracked it (now)."

Grant's new film, Heretic, is in cinemas now.